


set in skin

by Kahika



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Male Shepard/Jack | Subject Zero, Control Ending, Empathetic Links, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Love Confessions, Mass Effect Big Bang, Mass Effect Big Bang 2018, Minor James Vega/Ashley Williams, Minor Male Shepard/Ashley Williams, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-16 01:17:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14801598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/pseuds/Kahika
Summary: Ashley can't afford to have a turian name on her wrist, and she definitely doesn't want the empathetic link that forms once she and her soulmate touch names. Garrus wonders what's so special about the human whose name is on his. Destiny, or maybe just war, has a way of bringing soulmates together.





	set in skin

**Author's Note:**

> Art by the incredible [BethAdastra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethAdastra/pseuds/BethAdastra), whose art I adore on a regular day so I was hoping she'd pick my story. High-five for working with me on our shared rare pair OTP! More of her gorgeous art is on [her Tumblr](https://bethadastra-art.tumblr.com/).
> 
> A huge thank you to my dear friend [atonalremix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atonalremix/pseuds/atonalremix) for beta reading the relationship development, despite being mostly canonblind to _Mass Effect_ beyond roleplaying against my Ashley in panfandom games and my occasional rambles about Ash or about religion in the space age.
> 
> Thank you also to [neolith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neolith/profile) who came up with the title when I only had one idea which I hated.

Some people actively look for the owners of the names that seared across their wrists in puberty. Even those who don't go looking usually can't wait to meet their soulmates. Ashley, though, can't help but be on edge on the Citadel, as she has on every multispecies spaceport growing up. Every time they meet turians, she keeps an ear out for names, only relaxing when it's not the one she knows.

The C-Sec agent getting scolded by the Executor has the same first name as the one on her wrist, which is a close enough call for her to want nothing to do with him, but instead, Garrus comes towards them.

"Commander Shepard?" he asks. "Garrus Vakarian."

The name sends a shiver down her spine. Unfortunately, she is a professional, and she cannot justify a tactical retreat from the Council chambers.

Luckily, her potential soulmate leaves after talking to Shepard and ignoring her, off on a hunt for more clues about Saren.

 

Of course Shepard decides to follow up on his lead.

Of course he allows him to join the squad.

Of course there's a flicker of what could be interest in the turian's strange alien eyes as he studies her just a moment longer than he does Kaidan, but he doesn't say anything.

Not for the first time, she wonders if aliens even get the soulmate thing, or if it's only a human phenomenon.

 

It's Kaidan who brings it up.

"Yes, asari get our soulmates' names on our wrists," says Liara. "I was forty."

"Thirteen," says Tali. "I could barely wait until I got into a clean room to check - and I was so disappointed that it wasn't the star of _Fleet and Flotilla_!"

"I got mine during the Rite," says Wrex, which isn't an age, but frankly Ashley is both a little scared to ask and not in the mood for a lecture about krogan aging.

"I was twelve," says Garrus. "And it wasn't a turian name, so Dad hit the roof."

Ashley pales, and hopes no one notices. He waves off the outburst of demands for what species his soulmate is, only saying, "Mom didn't mind, which is the story of my life: Mom's fine with something that pisses Dad off. My sister laughed her ass off at me."

Kaidan chuckles. "I was eleven -" 

"Same here," she says.

He smiles over at her. "Mine was a bit of a surprise for my parents too," he says, but doesn't elaborate.

"Are any of you linked?" Tali asks, and follows up the round of headshakes with, "Did you ever try to find your soulmates? It's so scary that not everyone meets them."

"I didn't bother," says Wrex.

"But you're so old," says Tali. "You're not worried it won't happen?"

Ashley can't fathom krogan expressions, so she's genuinely concerned that the long look Wrex gives Tali is because Tali offended him by bringing up his age, but then he just laughs and says, "I figured, if it's really 'destiny', we'll meet at the right time."

It's a nice thing to hope. She can't imagine what a right time for her would be, but this important mission, the best assignment she's had in her life, that she just fell into, can't be right.

 

A rare moment alone with Garrus in the cargo bay is definitely the right time for him to ask her if Ashley Williams is her entire name. She wouldn't want to have this conversation in front of the others.

"I have a middle name," she says. "Madeline. Why?"

Garrus rolls up his sleeve, and points out her full name in tiny writing on the inside of his wrist.

"It's a common name," she says. "I'm not the only one who comes up when I search for myself on the extranet. Some of them are guys."

"True," he says, and she can't decide how she feels about him looking her up, even though she's searched for his name too (he's the only Garrus Vakarian on the extranet). He looks expectantly at her. "I showed you mine."

Ashley looks around before unstrapping the brace she wears on her right arm. She's gratified when he winces and looks away.

"Sorry," he mutters.

She shrugs, covering her wrist again. "Cooking accident a long time ago. I'm not a magic sparkly hearts and stars kind of girl, anyway."

"So what kind of girl _are_ you?" She raises an eyebrow, and Garrus backs up: "We're definitely _squad_ mates; I thought we should at least get to know each other."

"Um," she says, racking her brains. "Fourth generation military, enlisted straight out of high school, oldest of four sisters." She raises an eyebrow: _And you?_

"Second generation C-Sec, registered straight out of the military, seven minutes younger than my twin sister."

"You were military before you joined C-Sec?"

"We have ten years mandatory service from fifteen to twenty-five."

"Huh," she says. "That's... something."

"Mm, the humans at C-Sec are always surprised by it."

"Surprised by what?"

She looks up to find Wrex joining them, and while she's usually intimidated by him even as she wonders why they have a mercenary onboard, she's grateful to not be left alone with her potential soulmate now that the conversation's in safer territory.

 

"Ashley," Shepard says one day, shutting the airlock door to the ship after Kaidan heads inside. "Can I have a word with you?"

She nods, bracing herself for a reprimand. "Sir?"

Shepard grabs her wrist, still in full armor, and holds it up. "There's no nice way of asking this, so I'm just going to say it: Do you self harm?"

It's not the first time she's gotten that question. Usually it's after someone's noticed in the showers and tattled to someone higher in rank; this time she suspects he might have seen her taking off her brace the other day to clean out some Thorian gunk that somehow made its way through her armor _and_ compression suit. "No, sir. Those scars are over ten years old, and they were an accident."

"And you're doing okay?" Shepard presses. "Nothing I need to know about?"

"Captain Channing cleared me for duty after Eden Prime," Ashley says, perhaps a little more sharply than she should to her CO. "I'm sure you can ask for my psych eval."

With a sigh of relief, Shepard drops her arm. "Sorry," he says. "I just wanted to open the door now, rather than get surprised later."

This is a much kinder reason for asking than she'd assumed. "Fair enough, skipper," says Ashley. "Look, if it helps, they're not even... They were an accident."

"I know what accidental scars look like, Ash," he says. "Don't give me that crap."

"They are in my medical files as an accident," she says evenly. "And I got them in puberty, which was a _long_ time ago."

Shepard stares at her arm as if he can see through her armor, compression suit, and brace, until he realizes: "You don't have a name."

"I do have a name," Ashley says, reopening the door. "That was exactly the problem."

 

Well, not exactly. It's not the name itself that's the problem, but the species of its owner. Garrus is a good rifleman, a better tactician, and a fun sparring partner, both challenging and very willing to share what he knows. As he starts to relax around the squad, it turns out he has a sense of humor, which according to Wrex is unusual in turians, but it also turns out his conversational skills can sometimes be rated on a scale of 'stupid and insensitive' to 'casually xenophobic', which according to Wrex is rather common. If not for that, his species, and his willingness to risk civilians, he'd be the kind of guy she wouldn't mind having as a soulmate.

It's a dangerous thought, she realizes in the cargo bay one sparring session, as he pins her to the mat by her scarred wrist. She cannot afford to be soulmates with a turian; she has known this from the moment she knew what language the characters on her wrist were from.

Wresting a knee up between them, she shoves him off of her and tries to keep her distance. For a while, it even works.

Right up until Shepard assigns her to arm a nuclear bomb.

 

Ashley wakes up to the lights of the medbay and low voices murmuring at the other end of it. If she focuses, one's disapproving bordering on scolding; the other's sulking and possibly two-toned.

She tries to ask a question, but the words don't come out, just a questioning sound that gets both figures down by Liara's office to turn around and come over to her.

One of them's Chakwas. The other one's Garrus. She never expected to see anyone again.

"What the fuck?" she finally manages to get out.

"Shepard sent me to help out with anything you need," Garrus says stiffly. "You're welcome."

"Why?"

He sets his jaw and turns away. Shaking her head, Chakwas says, "Apparently he told the Commander he should have saved Lieutenant Alenko."

He's right, but that doesn't mean he gets to _say_ it. Some fucking soulmate. Ashley reaches up, but her body won't obey her, and her arm only rises about an inch. "Chakwas?"

"Yes, Ashley?"

"Slap him for me."

Chakwas chuckles, but doesn't move. "I took an oath to do no harm."

Shaking his head, Garrus leaves, and Ashley settles, allowing Chakwas to check her over more thoroughly and, more importantly, give her some very strong painkillers. The only bad thing about pain relief is that it clears up her mind for spiraling guilt about Kaidan, and his promising career, and his steady presence and support, and somewhere out there, his soulmate, who will now never know that connection - she is not worth that, any of it.

She's surprised when Garrus returns with a pitcher of water and a glass, and without saying anything, pours her a glass and sets it by her side. "Thanks," she says, and drinks it.

They sulk in silence until Shepard calls for a debriefing, and then, embarrassingly, she has to lean on him to get up to the conference room. By the time the debrief is over, Garrus is looking equal parts stricken and concerned as he helps her back down to the medbay, again on Shepard's orders.

"I shouldn't have said that," he says, his voice low. He may be apologizing now that she's humiliated herself with an emotional outburst to her CO in front of the whole squad, but Ashley still wishes Shepard had assigned literally anyone else to go with her. "That he shouldn't have saved you."

When he puts it that way, it feels even worse than Chakwas claiming he'd merely said Shepard should have saved Kaidan. "Damn right, you shouldn't have."

He's mercifully silent for all of a minute as they navigate the stairs, but once they get to the second deck, his conversational skills space themselves. "What did Shepard mean about your grandfather's honor - about being a martyr?"

She closes her eyes, as if that could shut him out when she's leaning into his side. "My grandfather is General Williams."

It takes him a moment to place the name. "The human general who saved his civilians and bought time for a surprise counter attack in the Relay 314 Incident?"

Flabbergasted, she looks back up at him. "That is... not how the Alliance saw it." He returns an equally confused look. "More like the first human to surrender to aliens."

"But it was tactically sound," he starts, but either the look on her face or their return to the medbay stops this train of thought, and he instead says, "I didn't know."

"It was an asshole thing to say," she says, wanting to return this conversation to the crater on Virmire instead of her family history. "You heard me on the radio; I wanted him to save Kaidan too."

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm starting to think there wasn't a right choice."

"There _was_ a right choice," she snaps. "Shepard just didn't make it. Like he made the wrong choice sending you to help me."

"I've been an ass," Garrus agrees. "I was thinking about the mission - about his biotics, tech, and medic training."

"So was I," she says quietly. It wasn't _just_ that her death might redeem her family.

For some reason, he sticks around as Chakwas fusses over her and gets her back into bed, and once she's settled, he leans down and presses his forehead to hers.

"What are you doing?"

"Turian affection," he says. "Because I'm sorry."

Their faces are too, too close together. Ashley closes her eyes and does not move. "Apology accepted."

 

She did not die on Virmire but if Saren and his geth don't kill her on Ilos, an Alliance firing squad will when they get back, so Ashley intends to spend her last night alive with someone human; no more turian affection for her (not that Garrus has tried since that headbutt). Shepard's been giving her mixed signals, which she's been too confused about to return anything clear, but she figures she won't be embarrassed for long if it turns out she's reading them wrong. Besides, she does care about him, even if she doesn't love him. He's strong, passionate, someone she could see herself with.

He kisses her, and she smiles against his lips - thank God she didn't just imagine him flirting. She lets her hands wander, because this is no time to be shy, and he lets her touch him, lets her get his shirt off as she walks him backwards to his bed (much more comfortable looking than those in crew's quarters - rank truly does have its privileges). He touches her in return, his hands as confident on her body as his mouth is on hers, and this - he - is just what she needs tonight: Someone who knows what he's doing, who can make her feel amazing even as they fly towards certain death, whom she can bring just as much pleasure.

Afterwards, as they lie together in a satisfied heap, he lifts her wrist and inspects it, running his thumb along her brace right over where her scars are.

"What was the name?"

She narrows her eyes. "Hey, it's not like I've looked at yours."

Shepard winces. "Okay, point taken. But I guess my real question is _why_?"

She nips at his jawline, half-assedly trying to distract him from this line of questioning. "Wasn't happy with it."

For a long time, he's silent, and then when she's starting down his neck, he says, "Ash, are you gay?"

Ashley stares at him, and then bursts out laughing.

"What?" he demands, looking slightly offended. "You told me you were religious -"

"Not a self hating homophobe," she manages to get out. "It's 2183! Jesus, Shepard, you get a girl begging for you and you think she's gay?"

"Hey, it could've been a reason you'd want to get rid of your soulmate's name!"

Still laughing, she shakes her head. "That would've been _so_ much easier!" Her parents had barely blinked at the female name on Lynn's wrist.

"Okay, you don't want to tell, that's fine," he says, kissing her shoulder. "Whoever's name it was, I wish it didn't make you feel like you had to hurt yourself to get rid of it."

"I wish it was yours," she says honestly. "You're sweet."

"Wish I had yours," Shepard says just as honestly, and she smiles, but shakes her head. Having a CO for a soulmate would have had its own set of problems.

She takes his hand and laces her fingers through his, lightly touching her brace to the thin silicone band he wears to cover his name as many in the Alliance do. With both materials and mismatched names between them, nothing happens except that she gets the feeling this might be, ironically for someone she just slept with, a little too intimate, but the thoughtful look on his face gives her pause.

Joker saves her by paging Shepard to the bridge, and they let go.

"Well, duty calls," she says, squeezing Shepard's shoulder. "I'm going to do one last weapons check, skipper. And hey..." She kisses him one more time, and gets up to find her clothes. "Soulmates or not, I believe in you."

 

Saying goodbye to Garrus after saving the Citadel is a _relief_. Sure, Shepard says they'll stop by the next time the ship needs supplies, but she no longer has a potential alien soulmate constantly around her, and she'll have warning the next time she sees him. She feels oddly safer with only Liara and Tali as the remaining members of their alien squadmates, and jokes with them about the ladies outnumbering and outpacing Shepard in the field.

Off the field, she still goes to bed with Shepard sometimes, feeling a little fearless after committing treason to save the galaxy and only getting a slap on the wrist. Without each other's names on their wrists and with his rank still above hers, there's no expectation that they'll get more serious even though they're both fond of each other and growing more casually affectionate, and she likes it.

As she watches his body spin out into space, she's glad for the first time that he's not her soulmate, because at least that's one layer of pain she's missing out on, one way that doesn't hurt on top of losing her friend, her skipper, her love in denial, she realizes with dismay and a vague hope that it's just grief twisting her fondness of him.

Seeing him on Horizon two years later makes her wonder if somewhere, he had a soulmate whose long dormant link suddenly snapped back, but mostly it makes her wonder how she could have befriended, believed in, fallen in love with someone who'd join a terrorist organization.

"I loved you," she tells him before walking away, and she realizes as she says it that that past tense is very much in the past.

 

Not everything can be left in the past. Garrus walks into her hospital room some time after Mars, all scars and silver armor, a far cry from the cleancut turian back in his C-Sec blues who walked away from her at the _Normandy_ 's dock three years ago.

"What happened to your face?" she blurts out.

"This, coming from the girl I almost didn't recognize for all her bruising," he says, which she presumes is fair; no one will give her a mirror. "A rocket happened. You should see the other guy."

A _rocket_? And he _survived_? She'd hate to see the person who fired it. "Think I'll pass," she says. "Shepard told me you were busy with the refugees. Why are you here?"

His gaze flicks to her scarred wrist and back (the hospital's physio team won't lend her a brace that she doesn't medically need), but he leaves it as the elcor in the room. "Before I opened my big mouth about Virmire, I'd like to think we were friends."

Sounds like he associated her pulling back from him with Virmire, instead of realizing she'd started earlier, but at least it means he didn't take it personally. She cracks a smile. "We're still friends, Garrus. Get over here."

He pulls up a chair and sits down at her bedside, and slowly but surely, they begin catching up beyond the little things Shepard has passed on. There's a twist in her stomach at the news that his father and sister are on Palaven (and that his mother is dead) just as her mother and most of her sisters are on Earth - something they never wanted to have in common. She's intrigued to hear about his Reaper task force and the support he's setting up for injured veterans and refugees now ("seems like both our families will be needing it"); he's approving when he hears about her speedy promotions to Lieutenant Commander and some of her duties before the Reapers attacked, then impressed to learn she's been offered Spectre status.

"Of course you should accept it," he says. "I can't think of anyone more deserving, and you could do so much with it."

"I'm still thinking," she reminds him, touched that he approves. So it's not just the scars and the armor that make him look like a new man. As they talk more, it really seems that he's grown up over the last two years: He praises the efforts to cure the genophage, specifically mentioning a future for the krogan under Wrex's leadership rather than seeing it as an unfortunate trade off for aid on Palaven as he might have on the SR-1. He listens to her Alliance stories without saying that turians would have done it better. He's kept his quick wit but seems to have lost his rashness, and he's so much more likable for it.

Eventually, it comes out that he'd worked with Shepard under Cerberus last year. She can't help her surprise at a human supremacist organization hiring aliens any more than she can help her discomfort with a friend - with her probable soulmate, whom she'd _just_ started to see as a more acceptable possibility than he had been two years ago - working for terrorists, but damnit, she's trying this fresh start thing with Shepard; she can certainly try it with Garrus instead of turning this reunion into an argument.

Still, it's such an awkward note for him to leave on that she's surprised he comes back the next time the _Normandy_ 's on the Citadel. In an attempt to avoid talking about Cerberus, she talks him into gossiping ("please, I'm so bored, and I miss everyone"), but the only non-family information about himself he divulges is that he somewhat worries he'll be forced into an arranged marriage to cement the turian-krogan alliance.

"Do turians _do_ arranged marriages?" she wonders.

"Not any more," he says. "Back in the old days, there were some for political things like this, though if they found their soulmates elsewhere, linking meant they could break it off without ruining the political agreement. Of course, with the war, anything could happen."

He does, however, cheerfully announce the affairs of everyone they know. Despite herself, she's most fascinated by the news that Shepard had hooked up with a biotic criminal somehow turned Grissom Academy teacher - the tattooed, half naked woman she'd seen on Horizon last year, she realizes with further description.

"Do you think they're soulmates?" she asks. That would go a long way towards explaining his bizarre downgrade.

Garrus shakes his head, opens his mouth, then seemingly changes his mind. He shuts it, and instead says, "I don't know if Jack even has a name. With all those tattoos it hurts my head to look at her for too long, so I haven't had a close look at her wrists or anything. But soulmates or not, he's definitely off the market." He pauses. "I know you two had a - a thing, back on the SR-1; I was there. Sorry to break the bad news."

Okay, thoughtful of him. Still, she shakes her head. "I'm not jealous," she says. Back on Horizon, she'd been right about not being in love with Shepard any more; it wasn't just that she was angry. Even now that they're back on good terms, she's not particularly interested in trying again with him, and Shepard had agreed with her that their relationship was a thing of the past, even as he'd admitted that he'd loved her too. "I'm just confused about how someone goes from me to - to tattoos and crime."

"He does have questionable taste sometimes," he says, and then at her raised eyebrow, adds, "Questionably wide. _You_ seem like an acceptable partner, for people into humans."

"'Acceptable'," she echoes, on the verge of laughing. " _Wow_. You must sweep all the ladies off their feet with compliments like that."

His mandibles splay in what she thinks is a turian grin. "You're already lying down, so I don't need to sweep," he says, and she tips over the edge into giggles. "Besides, _I'm_ not into humans; I can't imagine what Shepard sees in you, let alone Jack. But I do see an excellent soldier and a friend."

"Funny," she says, with a smile. "That's what I see in you."

 

Even with Garrus's surprisingly regular visits, it's good to get out of hospital; it's better, if bizarre, to become a Spectre. After the even stranger experience of realizing her boss is a traitor and training a gun on him (Shepard spares her from having to take the killing shot), returning to the _Normandy_ is almost an escape. The ship is soothingly familiar at first, before her memories of the SR-1 start to jar with both the Cerberus creature comforts and the debris of the Alliance retrofit. It doesn't help that everyone else already seems settled in while she's still trying to relearn her way around and learn names, like transferring to another new colony on her father's deployments, and she gets to do it all while stepping into the XO position Shepard offers her (perhaps conscious of the fact that he's taking the second human Spectre with him).

"Congratulations," Garrus says, stepping into her room like he had in Huerta Memorial. (For all that he talked about being busy, he dropped by almost as often as Shepard, even if it was just for a couple of minutes. She'd found herself hoping he would visit in a much more specific way than her usual hopes that _anyone_ would visit and help relieve her boredom.) "It's going to be nice to have an XO people actually like again."

The more hints he and Shepard drop about their time with Cerberus, the more she's amazed that they got anywhere, let alone took out the Collectors, without killing each other. "Thanks," she says, leaning up on the back of the couch to see him properly. "I think."

Looking around the room, he comes towards her, and she pats the seat next to her. "I can't do that vibe thing that Javik does entering a room," he says, joining her on the couch. "But it really does feel different in here as your quarters, without even changing any furniture or decorating."

Ashley raises an eyebrow in challenge, covering how she's not sure how to take that.

"Oh, not _bad_ different," he says. "But the last person to have this room was an asari justicar." He raises his arms, touching his talons together, and his voice is a lot more solemn. "Always meditating. Very serene. It's more alive with you here."

She chuckles. "Yeah, I try."

"I don't think you even need to try to make things more alive," he says. "You're too hard to kill."

"We have a Commander who's back from the dead," she says. "We're all harder to kill than him."

Garrus cackles. "I mean it," he says eventually, patting her good shoulder. "Everything that's happened to you - you're a survivor. It's good to have you back."

"Thanks," she says, genuinely touched. Surviving when others don't has always felt like a burden, even now after losing the Citadel guards. No one's ever told her it's a good thing.

For a moment, they sit in companionable silence, until he turns an oddly thoughtful gaze on her. "You know, we met through the _Normandy_ , and now we're back together on the _Normandy_ again," he says. "Kind of feels like destiny, doesn't it?"

Kind of feels like he might be thinking about whether they're soulmates again. "Kind of feels like war," she says.

"Kind of feels like war puts some things into perspective."

She eyes him warily. "What are you saying?"

He pulls one gauntlet off and rolls up the sleeve of his compression suit, and Ashley is once again confronted by her own name. She peels off her glove, pushes up her own sleeve, and shows him her scars in reply.

"What was the name?" he asks quietly.

"What does it matter?" she asks. "Plenty of people in the galaxy never find their soulmates and they still have happy relationships. Shepard and I got together on the first _Normandy_ before he died, and we were happy. His loss if he's more into biotics."

"What was your soulmate's name?"

"The whole soulmates thing is overrated," she says. "I don't know about turian soulmates beyond all the holonovelas I was watching in hospital, but humans definitely glorify soulmates too much. You get people rushing to meet their soulmates so that they're their first everything, without knowing anything about how to keep a relationship going. What good is feeling how unhappy they are all the time if you don't know how to stop it?"

He fixes his gaze on her. "I've questioned enough suspects and witnesses to know when someone's avoiding the question."

For all that he's trying to call her out on avoidance, it could not be more obvious that he wants to know if he's her soulmate. "And I've been asked enough questions to tell that you're avoiding asking it."

Garrus doesn't answer in words: He grabs her wrist with one hand, holding it still to press her name on his wrist to her scar -

\- and her mind is flooded with shock and a sense rather than the words of _I knew it_ and relief and _none of it is hers_ -

She wrenches her arm out of his grasp. "Get out," she gasps.

It's still there, though now overlaid with confusion - _he's_ still there, both in front of her and in that empathetic soulmate connection, and she wonders what he thinks of the panic he must be getting off her. "Ash -"

"That's an order, Officer Vakarian," she adds, trying to go sharper but mostly just going higher.

As he leaves, she yanks her sleeve down and puts her glove back on, but she can still feel him, rejected and scared and guilty, even when EDI says he's on the other side of the ship.

She pulls up her Spectre extranet connection, faster and more confidential than the Alliance connection, and searches variations on `how to remove soulmate connection` all night.

(The only consistent, peer reviewed method is when a soulmate dies. She doesn't want the link, but she doesn't want Garrus dead either.)

She wakes up the next day with a tentative attempt at soothing in her head and `Can we talk?` on her omni-tool.

`No,` she sends back.

She's writing Shepard a message asking him not to put her in shore parties with Garrus when she suddenly - no, _Garrus_ feels stung. He doesn't understand it and she doesn't want to explain. As bad as she feels about confusing him, she is not about to manage his feelings when she barely wants to deal with her own.

It's almost a relief when Shepard puts her into the shore party for a mission on Tuchanka, without Garrus.

 

Sarah had been in her hospital room when her soulmate link broke, and she'd screamed so loudly that nurses and doctors had come running in. Her mother had suddenly gone ashen in the middle of cooking dinner, and had told her before the Alliance called that her father was dead.

That's what Ashley remembers as Tarquin Victus goes down with the bomb. That's what makes her wonder whether he had a linked soulmate, and what it's like to suddenly lose that connection.

The parallels with Kaidan hit her in the shuttle with a numbness which Garrus clumsily tries to comfort her about through their connection, a warm, well meaning _presence_ ("I'll be here if you need me," he'd started to say in hospital before she was discharged) which she ignores in favor of visiting the memorial wall once she's out of her armor.

It seems like Shepard had the same thought about the memorial, because he joins her after a while, asking her to put in a good word with Kaidan for him. When they finish talking, she thinks he's going to leave, but he stays, and is silent long enough that Ashley's almost about to ask him if he's okay.

"He was my soulmate," he finally says.

"What?"

Shepard pushes up the sleeve of his hoodie to show her the name beneath his silicone band, and Ashley blanches. (Garrus immediately goes alert and inquisitive in her mind.) "We never linked; you know the regs about potential soulmates serving together. Besides, it just wasn't the time: We had a mission. I was his commanding officer. He was in the closet."

"Sir, if you don't mind my asking," she starts, then hesitates. "How could you..." Do that, leave your soulmate to die, all the endings to that sentence are far too accusatory.

"I had to put the mission first," he says, as if he's told himself this story a thousand times. "You were with the bomb and I had to make sure it would go off. If I went to him and the salarians, Saren could have killed you _and_ defused the bomb."

"And today we couldn't save a lieutenant who was trying to stop a bomb from going off," she says softly.

"When it comes to bombs and lieutenants, I can't win."

What a needlessly cruel destiny, to be fated for someone he'd have to leave behind. She looks at Kaidan's name on the wall. "Did you ever regret it?"

He puts a finger under her chin to make her look at him instead of the wall. "I do not regret choosing you, loving you, our night before Ilos, seeing you get the promotions and the Spectre status you deserve, or any battle you've fought by my side," he says firmly. "I regret losing a friend, a soldier, a soulmate, but I do _not_ regret _you_."

Tears sting her eyes. She'd been wondering if he regretted leaving a soulmate to die, not specifically choosing her, but it's amazing how much hearing this from someone else - the person who chose - _helps_ , even after all these years, and especially with the added knowledge that he chose her over his soulmate. "Okay."

Shepard pulls her into a hug, and she gladly hugs him back. If she'd known back then, maybe she wouldn't have made their debriefing all about her - but then, maybe she would have made it worse.

"Does anyone else know?"

"Garrus saw both our names before Virmire," he says, and she startles. "Maybe that's why he said I should've saved him."

"No," she says. "He told me he was thinking about the mission too, but more long term."

Shepard shrugs, then reaches up and presses Kaidan's name on his wrist to the one on the wall. The look in his eyes makes her feel like she's intruding, even though he knows she's here.

"Ash," he says, without turning around. "Do you remember your soulmate's name?"

"Yeah."

"Are they alive?"

She very carefully avoids looking at the battery. "Yeah, he is."

"Then don't do what I did," says Shepard, whipping around to look her in the eye. "If you know where he is, go get him. The Reapers taking soulmates is an easy win for them - don't let them have it."

"Connect on a mission as important as this?"

" _Especially_ on a mission as important as this," he says. "It could be your last chance."

"I'll think about it, skipper."

 

She thinks, and she ends up in the battery.

"This isn't going to work," she says, before Garrus can say anything.

His defensiveness flares in her head before it hits his stance. "Am I really that - I don't know, repulsive?"

"I don't exactly find turians sexy or anything," she says. "But that's not it."

"Then tell me what it _is_ , because it's not like I'm getting your _thoughts_ here."

"For starters, you _forced_ the connection on me, Garrus," she points out, and he winces, but their connection hums with agreement. "I never wanted this, and you went ahead and did it anyway. I do things when _I'm_ ready - I don't really go for people who ignore that."

He sets his jaw, and then nods. "I'm sorry," he says, and though it feels woefully inadequate, both in her reading of it and his own broadcasting self awareness, it's definitely genuine. "I shouldn't have taken that choice of whether to link away from you just to test a theory. It was a house in an Invictus jungle."

"A what?" she asks, distracted from the message by the unfamiliar idiom.

"An idea that only sounds good to the idiot who came up with it," he says wryly.

"Right." She waits, but the usual _it's okay_ lines don't come out. After a moment, she says instead, "Thanks for apologizing, but I really don't know if I can forgive that, or if I even want to."

"I understand," he says, and he does, even as he's frustrated with both her and himself. "Can I ask why you didn't want it in the first place?"

"Besides the whole -" She gestures vaguely at him, well aware of how xenophobic 'you're turian' would come across. "There are regulations against linked soulmates serving together: When we enlist, our names are recorded in our files, and they're cross-checked whenever we move units or deploy somewhere new. If you're being sent somewhere with a potential soulmate, you're not allowed to connect, and there's always someone around who's trained to watch them and report it if soulmates link."

His mandibles spread in shock. "Shepard -"

"Never connected with Kaidan," she finishes, and she _feels_ that realization ripple through him.

"I'd noticed you were more relaxed with me when you were in hospital than when we were serving together," he says. "Now I know why. Will they split us up?"

"Not if they don't find out," she says grimly. "No one's noticed. Let's keep it that way."

"Yeah, of course," he says. "But I still don't know what you mean by 'the whole' -" He repeats her gesture.

Ashley closes her eyes, and tries to calm down, tries not to give anything away across the bond before she starts talking.

"My grandfather, General Williams, was the first human to surrender to aliens, so he got demoted to desk work by the time I was born a year after the war, and eventually he was drummed out of the military entirely," she says, deliberately even. "He ended up working construction in the colonies until he died. And because of how the Alliance saw my grandfather, my dad, my hardworking, dedicated, career military dad got the worst postings and was never promoted any higher than Serviceman Third Class."

His disbelief and outrage are almost tangible. "I know you said after Virmire that the Alliance only saw his surrender, but I had no idea it was that bad. That's - that's not right."

"It's correct," she says sharply.

"It's not _fair_."

"Which is exactly what I thought when I was eleven, and these characters that weren't from any human language appeared on my wrist," she says. "We'd been looking at alien languages at school so I figured out it was turian. After all that crap because of Granddad's dealings with turians a whole twelve years ago, do you think Serviceman Williams's daughter could have had a turian soulmate?"

"Spirits," he whispers, his gaze falling on her sleeve as horrified realization dawns on him.

"Hurt like a bitch, but I made it look like an accident," she says, and he reaches out for her, equal parts compassion and pity, and she recoils. "And who knew it would have turned out to be handy when I eventually enlisted myself, because _I_ never got a shipboard posting either, not until Kaidan recommended me for the _Normandy_ , and my COs took leadership positions off of me even though I had the highest test scores and my squads liked me, and it would have been so much worse if my turian soulmate was on my wrist for everyone to see!"

More than the reasons, he needs to understand what she's about to tell him, so she focuses her gaze on him. "So, no. It's not destiny putting us back on the _Normandy_ together. Destiny doesn't win this time. Destiny failed. We are the star-crossed lovers that will never be. But after what happened to Victus today - after what happened to Kaidan - I came in to tell you why."

She makes for the door, and she's halfway back there when Garrus says, "I was twelve. And I had the same, 'what _are_ these characters' reaction and looked it up, and when I worked out my soulmate was a human... I wanted to find out what was so special about a human that we'd be destined for each other. I couldn't wait to meet you."

It actually makes her laugh as she turns around. "You're the last person I would have taken for a romantic."

His embarrassment feels like a gentle buzz even before the duck of his head and the flap of his mandibles. "I was young and naïve, and it mostly wore off by the time I met a Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. Now, that human soldier surprised me - she was blunt, and a terror in a firefight, but warm and comforting to the husband of her dead squadmate -"

"I forgot you were there," she says honestly. She'd been too focused on Samesh.

"It was something I held onto later when you wanted nothing to do with me or Wrex," he says, something surprisingly soft in her mind. "And because it was Wrex too, I figured you were a different Ashley Madeline Williams and just xenophobic, nothing to do with the name you might have under your brace."

She grimaces. "It was both," she admits. "I was a jerk."

"It's not like I didn't say my share of xenophobic things back then," he says gently. "You were just more passive aggressive about it instead of saying it to our faces in enclosed spaces."

"I _am_ sorry," she says. "It was unfair of me, and I was wrong."

"Apology accepted." He hesitates, then says, "I'm sorry again for linking us. I guess part of me thought... I don't know, that if you _were_ my soulmate... Linked people always talk about how great it feels, how happy they are. I thought that would happen to us."

"Maybe they were already in love," she says, and at the sudden thoughtful look in his eyes, she adds, "Garrus, I'm not looking for a relationship at all right now; it's not just the regs, my family history, and you linking us without my consent. I don't want to complicate anything at the end of the world, more than you already have."

"I get it," he says, defeat sinking from him. "How about I give you some space for a while? Stay friends, stay professional, but with more space."

"I think I need that," she says. "I don't want to spend any more energy on this when we're at war, but I think I need space to move past it."

He nods, and says, "Well, you're in my space right now."

With a rueful smile, she turns on her heel. As she goes, he calls out from behind her, "I'm sorry about Lieutenant Victus."

She suspects he's getting her background grief more from the link than from the reports or anything she's said about today, but she'll let that one slide.

 

Soon it's her turn to realize that using their connection is so subconscious, so natural, that she does it without thinking.

Pain - physical pain - echoes in her nerves and Ashley finds herself walking to the medbay, telling Chakwas that Garrus has been hurt a second before Shepard calls it in.

When she's thirsty at lunch, Garrus gets an extra water bottle and looks at it in confusion, trying to figure out why he did that, before she swipes it off his tray.

There's one late night where she can ignore the bewilderment, but not the eventual shades of arousal, and she realizes only once her clothes are off and her hand's between her legs that it's not just _her_ who hasn't gotten laid in a while.

" _Fuck_ ," she mutters, but she rubs it out anyway, and tries not to read into the fact that she comes to a vision of blue eyes (she's _always_ thought them pretty; this has nothing to do with Garrus).

She tells James the next evening that she needs to take the edge off, just not that she wants to take the edge off the _link_ even for a little while, and he produces a bottle of mezcal. Sober weariness leaks through to her, slowing down her rate so that her usual 'drunk' point is merely 'tipsy', until she starts drinking more, faster.

(James is drunk too when she asks him about his soulmate, and he shrugs and says he's never met any Jennifers with the right surname.)

"You're my only real competition for shooting, Ash," Garrus says at dinner, in a squad wide discussion of shore party formations that lights up his emotions around friendship and, weirdly, tactical satisfaction. "I miss going on missions with you."

"I haven't been feeling well lately," she says, and she can feel Garrus's eyes on her and the prickle of his feeling that this isn't the whole truth, even as Shepard laughs and starts gleefully telling everyone about finding the second human Spectre curled up pathetically on the floor with an empty bottle next to her.

 

"Ash," Shepard says in his cabin, where he's summoned her after dinner. "I've granted your request not to be put in shore parties with Garrus - I think it's only fair I know why, especially when you were my sniper team, and Garrus misses you. I thought you were fine with serving with aliens, after those initial... hiccups."

"You're right," she says. "But... I want your word that both of us will continue to serve on the _Normandy_ after this conversation."

His eyes narrow. "Williams, what's going on?"

She stands at attention, hoping that somehow this more professional stance will help repair the broken regulations. "We're soulmates, sir. Garrus linked us before I could tell him our regulations on soulmates serving together."

Shepard stares at her for a long moment, and then says, " _Shit_."

"Please let me stay," she says - _begs_ , with Garrus giving her the now very familiar (very sweet, she's starting to think) wordless vibe of _what's wrong are you okay can I help let me help please_. "We haven't - acted on our connection any more than that, I've been avoiding him -"

"When I said, 'Go get your soulmate,' I didn't know he was on the squad," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. Sudden understanding lights up his eyes. "Is that how Dr. Chakwas is always ready if one of you gets hurt on a mission?"

"Yes," she says. "Not every physical sensation gets through the link, but pain makes it across, and - I know it's his, not mine."

"Shit," Shepard says again, looking at her brace. "Garrus, your soulmate. No wonder you... had that little 'accident' with your wrist."

" _Please let me stay_." 

"Of course," he says, and she can't help but fling her arms around him in gratitude as Garrus's confusion grows. "He didn't know, you're not doing anything, and I meant what I said when you asked to come aboard: I can't do this without you."

 

Beyond the _Normandy_ 's windows, Thessia falls, Eden Prime on a planetary scale. The squad comes back disillusioned, devastated, furious, and empty-handed; she picks up the loss, Garrus the anger. Ashley manages to catch Liara on her way out of Javik's quarters, and lets her rant, lets her cry, makes paltry attempts at comfort (someone else's words, of course) for what feels like a lifetime. When Liara finally sends her away, she's so drained that all she can do is curl up on her sofa, barely noticing Garrus's reassuring presence in the link.

What she does notice, much later, is his voice. "Ash."

She doesn't sit up, let alone turn around.

"Look, I - I can feel your pain, and you don't have to be alone for that."

"The regulation against linked soulmates serving together is the strongest of the fraternization regs," she says. "The only reason Shepard didn't kick me off the _Normandy_ is because we're not a couple."

"Did he _say_ that? Because I'd guess that it's also because you're a damn good soldier."

Well, maybe that was what he'd meant by not being able to do this without her.

There's a conscious shift in Garrus's emotions that she recognizes a second later as a switch of tactics. "I can go away if you still need space. But after a day like today, I'm here to be your friend, if you need it. Not your soulmate, just your friend."

He _has_ given her space, she realizes. He hasn't sought her out one-on-one until now, finally making good on that offer to be here if she needed him. He was probably thinking about the little sniping competitions they used to have back on the SR-1 when he said he missed fighting with her.

She's been so busy trying to keep him out as a soulmate that she'd forgotten to be a _squad_ mate.

Immediately he goes apologetic in her head, and his tone is gentler when he says, "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it. I'm pretty talked out from Liara. I could use a hug too."

She considers, lifts her eyes to his reflection in the window, and says, "Get out of that armor if you want to hug me." She's been hugged before by people in armor while she was in civvies, and ceramic plating is too cold and hard for comfort.

His relief washes through the link before the first click of an armor seal. She still doesn't turn around, but finds herself watching his reflection strip down to his compression suit - she'd always kept her eyes to her own gear when getting ready for or coming back from missions. He wears looser clothes for sparring; his figure outlined by the tight charcoal suit is a hell of a view, sharp and lean beneath the bulk of the heavy armor he wears now.

Thankfully, he doesn't seem to notice. When he finally moves around the couch, he holds his arms out, letting her be the one to initiate the hug, the opposite of the last time they'd touched, so she stands, wrapping her arms around his shoulder and waist. His plates dig into her in the wrong places. As he hugs her back, she shifts, trying to get more comfortable -

Ashley's always moved around too much for the word 'home' to mean a place to her; it's always been the people, and up until this moment, it's been her family. When her skin touches his plates, her forehead tucking under his chin, it feels like coming home. It's warmth, it's a gun mod slotting into place, it's a suddenly _heightened_ awareness of his emotions, it's so familiar she feels it in her bones even though it's so new: It feels _right_.

" _Oh_ ," Garrus says faintly; his surprise and wonder are more amplified within her than his feelings usually are. "That's... intense."

"Shut up," she murmurs. The discomfort of their mismatched bodies is a dull memory. "Shut up. Just..."

He strips off a glove in reply, touching his bare palm to the back of her neck, and while the extra contact doesn't intensify their connection more, it certainly makes it easier to stay on this level. She copies his movements, removing a glove and hooking her arm inside his cowl to touch his neck, and he lets out a shuddering breath. When he'd offered her a hug, he'd probably only been thinking about the simple comfort of touch, not the way the link goes damn near euphoric with physical contact. She'll take both.

As she - they - grow more comfortable in each other's arms, bliss settles over both of them to the point that it grows harder to distinguish his emotions from her own. Usually, the idea of being so entangled in his emotions would horrify her, but today has been horrifying enough that this feels like shelter, or at least something safer and warmer than grief for an entire planet.

Which is probably why she doesn't quite catch the yearning in him until he says, "You feel it too," soft but persuasive, or trying to be. "We _belong_ like this. We could have this more often -"

She recoils, stepping back from him, her hands back to herself; their connection fades back to its normal, more separate level. "No," she snaps, retrieving her glove from her pocket. "We are _not_ going to do this more: We are on an Alliance vessel, and while you may not be subject to the regs, _I_ am."

"You're a Spectre," he says. "Couldn't you just pull Spectre authority, claim this is needed for the mission?"

"How often do I pull Spectre authority?" she asks. "I'm Alliance first: It's in my blood, and it's been part of my life a hell of a lot longer than you have."

"Understood," he says flatly, but amid the disappointment and resignation, there's a quiet triumph in his broadcast and in his small smile.

She's not in the mood for it. "What?"

"You're too annoyed with me to feel as sad as you did before."

Damnit, he's right. She points at the door. "Armor on and you're dismissed."

He continues to smirk as he picks up and puts on the pieces of his armor, so slowly that in her irritation it seems deliberate. In the nights to come, her subconscious reverses the sequence, but she always wakes up before he takes the compression suit off.

Despite herself, Ashley finds herself wondering what sex is like with the link. Just a touch had felt so right - what about someone else's pleasure in that feeling of home?

 

Mere days before their assault on the Cerberus base seems like a weird time to finally give in to Joker's nagging about the apartment and throw a house party, but then she remembers how she felt making a pass at Shepard the night before Ilos, and she understands that it's that intention of one last hurrah but for the whole squad.

More than just the current squad, she realizes, as strangers walk in and Shepard, Garrus, Tali, Joker, and EDI greet them with enthusiasm. It's a last hurrah for the squad under Cerberus too. Meeting them under less emotionally fraught circumstances than Horizon last year and less dangerous circumstances than the various assignments this year helps humanize them for her, particularly Jack, who's wearing more clothes these days, who's blunt and foulmouthed but not abrasively so, who, most importantly, makes Shepard more adorably happy than he ever was with her.

"You okay?" Garrus asks, watching her watch them.

"Yeah, I'm good," she says honestly. "They're cute together. I could use a drink, though - because it's a party, not because I'm jealous," she feels the need to clarify.

"Get in fast before Traynor tries to make you a weird cocktail," he advises her, raising his own glass.

She pours herself a vodka and Paragade, and notes with surprise that it's good vodka - only halfway through her glass, it feels more like she's finished it.

She's two thirds through when she realizes that part of the feeling isn't hers: Garrus is on his way to tipsy up on the balcony with one of his Cerberus friends. She intercepts him when he comes downstairs for a refill, grateful that her gloves prevent skin-on-skin contact.

"Hey," she says. "Slow down. You're drinking for two."

"Only if you do," he says, grinning. "Look, I'm all for the link making me a cheap drunk if it means I won't feel as bad tomorrow."

Somehow, she hadn't considered this. "As you were," she says, and he clinks his glass against hers before they drift apart again.

Dropping in on Traynor and Joker, she finds them discussing how hot EDI's voice is and leaves as soon as she finishes her drink - it'd be weird even if EDI's body hadn't beaten her within an inch of her life. Instead she grabs a beer and joins an argument over whether muscular or biotic strength is more powerful. Not being biotic, she has a preference for muscles, but of course Shepard with his biotic girlfriend picks biotics, which naturally leads to Liara Lifting James off the floor.

By her third drink, it gets harder to untangle her emotions and physical responses from Garrus's. At least their drunk moods are somewhat similar in tone - she gets giggly and affectionate, he laughs at everything and tells outrageous stories - rather than one of them being an angry or moody drunk. If anything, she wonders about the occasional creeping feeling that Garrus is up to something - she gets flashes of this sometimes just before he takes someone down sparring in the shuttle bay, but never something as sustained as this.

Trying to find out what he's doing looks less appealing when James starts flirting with her, emboldened by the party atmosphere in a way he hadn't been when she drank most of his mezcal on the ship. It starts off surprisingly sweet before veering into bad Spanish pickup lines, but she makes him repeat them because his accent's better than hers and maybe this will help her improve. Besides, James is exactly her type, all muscles and heart and beneath it all, enough brain for N-school; if he wasn't her subordinate and if she hadn't been trying to avoid wartime distractions only for one to press itself to her wrist, she might have made a move herself.

She lets him kiss her, just once, before Shepard calls everyone for a group photo. She even kisses him back. It's a good kiss, too, James knows what he's doing, but it's nowhere near how amazing a simple hug had felt with the soulmate connection active.

The comparison's still on her mind when she catches Garrus's eye during the photo.

 

Besides the faint hangover, she feels the best she has in _months_ , completely at home in this luxurious bed, with someone's arms around her -

She shifts, and it fades, and she realizes exactly whom she's been snuggling with.

Ashley sits bolt upright as Garrus blinks sleepily at her, looking odd without his visor. "We didn't." She pauses, re-evaluating: He's in his compression suit, his armor and visor on the floor beside the bed; she's in her trousers and tank top, her boots trailing towards the bed but her jacket miraculously hung on the door. She doesn't feel like she had _that_ kind of fun last night. But still... "Did we?"

Confirming her suspicions, he shakes his head. "You looked like you wanted to with Vega, but you were way too drunk, so he and I helped you to bed. Then he went back to the party, but I decided to stay because I was also way too drunk - I think we got each others' drunkness - so I was ready to call it a night too, and you were like, 'Good, you're not allowed to get mugged or crash a skycar going back to the ship.' I didn't touch you after putting you in bed, and I kept my gloves on the whole time."

"Thank you," she murmurs. Once again, he was there when she needed him.

He shrugs. "Hey, what are friends for, right?"

She nods, and moves to get up, and he blurts out, "Stay."

"What?"

There is a longing in him for something larger and more encompassing than a snuggle in a soft bed. "Just for a little while longer. Please." She stares at him, and he adds, "It was helping with the hangover."

"You raise a good point," she admits.

"So?"

It's just for the hangover, she tells herself as she goes to his arms, forehead against his chin, and the linked physical contact really does help drown out the pounding in her head, even though she'd expect the hangover to simply double.

"Last time," she tells him, her voice low. They're going to the Cerberus base soon; it could well be their last chance.

"Noted."

This is dangerous for how _safe_ it feels, for his wonder and bliss folded into it, but now that she's here she doesn't want to ever leave.

She falls asleep again. She's not sure how much later it is that she wakes up alone, hazy warmth in her head along with the hangover, but within a minute Garrus returns with a plate and a glass.

"Vega made breakfast for everyone," he says. "We saved you a couple of slices of levo bacon. And Traynor picked out a levo painkiller for you."

That warmth is him being actively helpful, she realizes; she's felt it before on the ship and heard later from Tali or Adams that Garrus had fixed something they were having trouble with. Gingerly sitting up, she takes the painkiller first and drinks the entire glass of water, then starts on the bacon and eggs. "Thanks."

He waves off her thanks, but takes the glass, leaves, and brings it back refilled. It's so unexpectedly sweet of him when she could very well go and get her own breakfast that as he sets the glass beside the bed, she takes hold of his carapace and tugs him over for a headbutt. That had been the turian affection he'd shown her after Virmire, right?

From the way he freezes up, she got it right, and very quickly, his stunned undercurrent to the ease and comfort of linked physical contact melts away. She can't help but be pleased that her small gesture from his culture made him happy, even as she wonders if that's just residual warmth for him from the physical contact.

"This is self interest," he protests, his voice raw as he pulls away; the shy fondness in her head instantly reveals his words as a lie. "Second hand hangovers aren't as bad as your own but I still don't like feeling it. Your hangover after drinking with Vega was _not_ fun."

"Whatever, Garrus," she says, grinning. "That's not the whole truth and you know _I_ know it."

"Can't get away with anything with a soulmate connection," he grumbles, but there's something else in their connection that she can't quite identify.

 

Knowing they're hunting Cerberus tomorrow should feel good, especially after what she saw on Horizon. They're taking down an organization that's caused so much pain to so many people, an organization her closest friends would have never worked with if they'd had a choice. And with this attack, they're also finally taking on the Reapers, who have killed and hurt even more.

Mostly, though, Ashley just feels restless. She lies in bed for an hour without falling asleep. She tries reading poetry, but can't focus on the words she's read a thousand times before. She gets up and goes downstairs to the armory and experiments with mods, but the movements fall into autopilot without that soothing, ritual feeling of routine.

With a sigh, she puts her Black Widow away and goes to the forward battery. This unease isn't hers alone, and she knows of one thing that might be able to calm them both down.

Garrus has his back to the door when she comes in, screens of scrolling calculations and graphs projecting in the air above the terminal. He's in something sleeveless she's never seen before, his pants shorter and looser than anything else he wears - she'd never thought to wonder what turian pajamas look like.

"Hey," she says.

The screens disappear, and he turns around, surprised. "Ash," he says. "What are you doing here?"

"You're keeping me awake."

He winces, embarrassment reverberating through their connection. "Sorry. I'll get to bed soon -"

"I get it," she says. "I'm nervous too. We're finally going after Cerberus, after the Reapers..."

"We've taken two down already," he says.

" _Just_ two," she says. "With a giant thresher maw and the entire quarian fleet doing orbital drops. And those were both alone -"

"Now _you're_ going to keep _me_ awake," he says. "Damn, cynicism is _not_ good from two people at once."

"Sorry," she says, trying to calm down by deliberately slowing her breathing, like she does when she's sniping (like he does too). Once at least her breath's calm, she says, "That's actually why I came in here: You're nervous. I'm nervous. I thought we could hug."

For a moment, he simply stares at her, and she's about to take it back and return to her room when he takes off his gloves and steps forward to hug her, his talons at the back of her neck. That comfortable peace bursts within her, and she sighs contentedly, wrapping her arms around him in turn.

"Ashley Madeline Williams," he drawls. "Proposing soulmate contact."

"As friends," she reminds him. Besides, he's less anxious now too, she can feel it, on top of him being too busy hugging her to go over tactics or whatever was on his monitor yet again.

He shushes her and says, "Just enjoy it, Ash."

A reasonable request. For a while, she does, snuggling against him, feeling like she's floating in the waves of serenity she's getting through their connection. She could almost fall asleep like this, except for one thing: "You're too tall," she grumbles into his chest.

"I can fix that," he says. "I have a cot in here, and I did say I'd go to bed soon, if you'd like to join me. As friends," he adds at the same time as she does.

Touched that he predicted her response, she chuckles, and realizes she doesn't hate the idea. "I'll probably sleep easier with you than in my own room with both of us worrying."

"Exactly." He bends down and puts an arm under her legs, scooping her up like a bride in the old vids, and she laughs as he carries her to bed that way. "What?"

"There was this old human tradition for opposite gender couples getting married," she explains. "The groom carried his bride over the threshold of their new home like this."

"What a weird tradition," he muses, confusion swirling beneath the pleasure of physical contact. "There are more intimate ways to carry someone - much easier ways to touch your soulmate while carrying them."

It's true: His bare arms under her knees wouldn't have been a point of connection if she didn't wear shorts to bed, and she's deliberately hooked her arm inside his carapace, but that could have gone over his shoulder if this wasn't her personal stress relief.

"You headbutt affectionately," she points out. "I don't think humanity has the monopoly on weird traditions."

"Okay, point taken."

When they reach his cot, he sets her down gently, and she has to wonder, "No blanket?"

"With talons?" he asks, wiggling them as he takes off his visor. "I don't wear gloves to bed."

Ah, like how she doesn't sleep in a bra. "Fair."

"Are you cold?"

"A little," she admits.

He presses something beneath the bed, and the mattress warms beneath her. "Heat pad."

"I need one of these," she says, half muffled as she leans her cheek on it, and he chuckles as he joins her in bed, wrapping his arms around her from behind, his limbs pressed to hers.

"I hope this is platonic in human culture," he says. "I figured not being face to face would be less awkward."

Well, she doesn't regularly spoon her friends, but he's definitely right about the awkwardness. "This works."

His relieved sigh huffs against the back of her neck. "Alright. Good night, Ash."

She places her hand over his, just for that extra point of contact. "Night, Garrus."

"EDI, lights, please," he calls, and without a word from their AI, the non-essential lights shut off.

She's not any sleepier than she was in her own room, but she's calm, even happy, her worries about tomorrow failing to matter in the peace of their connection. Slowly, she realizes that even in that brief moment of no contact between Garrus putting her on the bed and then spooning her, she'd still been content - just being around her friend and talking about something else had helped too, the way it had in the hospital. She'd forgotten he was good at that, too scared of their connection and too angry that he'd forced it on her, but at least that space she'd taken had allowed her to cool off.

Her mind drifts, afloat in the easy bliss, with very little stimuli to occupy her. As Garrus shifts against her in the lowered light, old nighttime questions come to mind.

"Hey," she blurts out, before she can think better of it. "You still awake?"

"Mm."

What an ambiguous answer. "Is that 'mm, barely' or 'mm, go on'?"

"The second one."

"Do you ever wonder..." She swallows, second guessing the question, then decides to forge ahead anyway - it's easier without seeing him looking at her. "Wonder what sex feels like with a soulmate link?"

She can feel how stunned he is through both their empathetic and their physical connections, and he's still and silent for so long that she regrets asking.

"If you don't like my answer, will you leave?"

Jesus, this could go either way. "No."

He lets out a long sigh of relief. "Then yes, I have."

"Oh, thank God," she blurts out - he's not going to see her as creepy.

"It's hard _not_ to wonder when even accidental contact feels so good," he says.

" _Yes_ ," she says. "We get so much from the link on a day to day basis; using that for what turns you on instead of just pain relief or calming down must be incredible."

"I did a little research, and some people say it's better than asari mindmelding," he says. "Which says a lot, considering how mindmelds supposedly get more coherent thoughts than the emotions and physical sensations from the link."

"But does it combine?" she suddenly finds herself wondering.

"There is a surprising lack of information on asari soulmate links with mindmelding involved which isn't behind a paywall."

"Stupid academics."

"Exactly."

His talons idly smooth her shirt over her stomach, just low enough that she catches her imagination wandering again.

Well, they're going after Cerberus and the Reapers tomorrow, nothing like a last hurrah - and there is that _something_ she keeps feeling from him.

"Wanna try it?"

"Mindmelding?" he asks, sounding genuinely confused.

His shock in the link says he understood her, but she spells it out anyway. "Soulmate sex."

He loosens his grip on her, though he still keeps some points of contact. "That... sounds complicated to me."

"What, are turians kinky?"

"Not mechanically complicated," he says quickly. "Although interspecies awkwardness did come to mind. I was thinking more about what you called it: Complicating things at the end of the world."

She turns around to look at him. "We are so close to the end that we might not even have a lot of time for things to be complicated." It's not as sure a thing as it seemed when she made her move on Shepard, but she definitely hasn't made any long term plans in a while.

"You think we won't make it?"

"I don't know what to think," she admits. "Point is, we're taking on Cerberus and the Reapers. I want something... good."

Garrus sits up, drawing away from her, but holds up a hand before she can say anything. "I'm not kicking you out," he says. "I just want to think about it without the - rightness clouding my judgment."

"It's a hell of a cloud," she agrees, propping herself up on one elbow, but even without touching him, it still doesn't seem like too terrible an idea. She trusts him, and with their connection, they'd be able to tell right away if one of them does something that isn't working for the other.

He gazes at her, his mixed thoughts and unsureness like churning waves in her mind. "I've had a lot go wrong these last few years," he says eventually. "My time at C-Sec, and on Omega. I still don't feel like I did enough to prepare Palaven for the Reapers. And then there's you. My soulmate. Who I said should have been left to die, who I forced a soulmate link on without asking." He shakes his head at himself. "You're the last person I would have expected to call sex with me a good thing."

"It's not like I can try soulmate sex with anyone else," she points out.

"Wow, thanks," he says. "I feel so wanted."

It's not enough, she realizes. Despite enjoying linked physical contact, he's continued to feel guilty about linking them in the first place, long past the point where she thought he'd move on. She sits up so she can look at him properly. "Look, I may not be happy about the link, but that doesn't mean I want you to beat yourself up about it." She hasn't exactly forgiven him, but she's moved past it, focused on navigating what they have now.

"Sorry," he says. "I forget you can feel it too."

"Not just that," she says. "We can't change it; there's no point wasting energy on it during a war. And, well... You're one of my best friends, even if I was too busy freaking out to be your friend at all for a while. I don't know about you, but I want my friends to be happy."

Something steadies within him - within her. "That's the other thing I was getting to: We're friends. It's one more reason why if we're going to do this, I want it to go right. No regrets, no one unhappy, nothing unwanted."

"I aim for those pretty much every time I have sex," she points out, but she feels bad joking about it when he's completely serious - when in the swirl of emotions she's getting from him, she almost thinks she can pick out sadness. "I don't want to end up as yet another thing in your life that went wrong."

As he looks at her a moment more, his feelings focus towards intention. "Then yes, Ash," he says. "I'm willing to try soulmate sex with you."

"Great," she says, and then realizes: "But it _is_ mechanically the same, right?" She gestures to clarify, two fingers of her right hand going in and out of a ring made with her left.

He snorts. "Yes, it's mechanically the same. But we'll probably need these." He reaches under his cot into a foot locker, and then tosses her a small box.

"Prevention of allergic symptoms from cross chirality sexual contact, for levo species," she reads, and then looks up at him. "Why do you even have these? Should someone out there be jealous right now?"

"No," he says quickly. "Remember when I thought I might be forced into an arranged marriage to seal the turian-krogan alliance? Mordin got me these as another joke."

There's a pang of grief through their connection as he namedrops the salarian scientist.

"I bet he never thought they'd actually be used," she says.

"Or the rest of it," he says, with a sweeping gesture encompassing the counterpart pills for dextro species, a packet of turian condoms ( _extra strength: no more talon tears_ ), and levo lube.

She raises an eyebrow, teasing. "Not even the condoms?"

"I don't exactly sweep women off their feet on a regular basis," he says. "Shepard, ah, what's the term? Played wingman for me on shore leave when I wasn't expecting it - I was lucky _she_ carried condoms."

Ah, that explains the second hand lust she'd felt a few nights before the party, one of the weirder emotions to get through the link. With a chuckle, she sits up to take the levo pill. After he takes his own pill, he reaches for his tunic, until she puts a hand on his wrist.

"Easy, cowboy," she says. Even with human guys, where she knows exactly what she's getting underneath their clothes, she likes to ease into things before getting naked, and Garrus is not a human guy. "Don't turians do foreplay?"

"We do," he says, his mandibles flapping.

"So let's do this properly instead of rushing," she says, and she leans forward. She presses her lips to his mouth plates, and immediately gets a wave of bewilderment from him, even over how right the contact feels in the link. Drawing back, she touches her thumb to his lower mouthplate curiously. "Not a turian thing?"

"No," he says. "But I know it's a human thing: I, uh, did some research -"

This mention of research is far more embarrassed than his earlier talk of research on soulmate sex. "Do you mean you watched human porn?"

"Uh."

"Oh, God," she realizes. "That's why you were so confused that one night."

To his credit, he looks as mortified as his broadcast. "Probably."

"I don't even want to know why," she decides. "But do you want to try it again?"

"If you want to?"

The thing is, _she's_ curious now, about whether it'll work for him, whether he'll like it. "Just follow my lead."

As she kisses him again, she tries to radiate confidence, reassurance, faith that he can get this right, and after a moment, it seems to help, Garrus shifting against her. Once he's gotten the hang of moving his mouthplates against her lips, she slips her tongue inside his mouth, and confusion hits him again with a touch of distaste, but he lets her explore his mouth, and tentatively, he slides his tongue against hers in return. The texture's rougher than human tongues and he tastes somewhat like citrus and pepper combined but she can get into it, and the motion's definitely coming along. Beneath the pleasant haze of contact, he's still unsure, but gradually he starts to add more pressure, starts to make his own moves that aren't just copying hers, starts to enjoy it.

He's panting when he eventually disengages, and Ashley grins. "Breathe through your nose."

"It's not exactly intuitive," he grumbles, but she can feel his intrigue and his want for more, even before he tugs her back towards him and kisses her, sloppy but endearingly determined. She grabs his carapace to steady herself, and he seems to take it as permission to touch, his hands on her face, her neck, her shoulders. There's a thread of disbelief in his emotions, which she breaks the kiss to ask about.

"What?" she asks. "You've got some, 'I can't believe this' going on there."

"So do you," he points out.

"I can't believe I'm kissing a turian," she confesses with a grin. She'd been joking when she'd told Shepard three years ago that if ordered to kiss a turian, she'd ask which cheek, and here she is kissing one on the mouth of her own accord.

"I can't believe how soft you are," he says, remarkably tender.

It's a little _too_ tender for her liking, even accounting for their continued contact, not to mention all her work to _not_ be soft. She shoves him onto his back, lays him out and pins him like they're sparring, and doesn't miss the dilation of his pupils: So he likes it rough. "I _dare_ you to call me soft again."

"Your skin," he protests, stroking her shoulder. "Ash, you're the toughest woman I know, but at the same time you're so soft. Turian skin's tougher than yours."

She touches his neck, finds it's true - the only comparison she can come up with for his skin is leather - but kisses him to shut him up anyway, because it's fun and because under the wonder at human anatomy, there's desire that she can answer. He responds with enthusiasm, arching up into her and eventually, when they've been kissing for long enough that her grip on him has eased in favor of investigating his skin and plating, rolling them over so that she's the one on her back.

"It looked weird in the vids," he says, his voice like whiskey. "But I get it now."

"I'm starting to feel underprepared," she complains. "Although I don't know if I'd have enjoyed a turian porn vid as much as you apparently enjoyed the human ones..."

"Lucky you, you get your first glimpse of turian foreplay in person."

"Show me."

He ducks down, and at first she thinks he's going for her breasts, but then he presses his face against her neck, mandibles flicking against her skin, breathing her in, and he drags his tongue slow and rough up her throat. It's a damn good thing she's already lying down because it makes her weak in the knees, fire racing through her veins at both the physical sensation and how much he wants her.

"Fuck," she breathes.

The sound he makes is along the lines of agreement, but the look he gives her and the vibe in her head is a clear request for approval.

"That's good," she reassures him. "We kind of do that too, but usually more suction than tongue."

"Yeah? How?"

She lifts her head so she can press her lips to his neck and suck, and though there's another ripple of confusion from him, it passes quickly, and soon he's trembling above her.

"Spirits, I like that," he says, barely articulating the pleasure she can feel from him. "Don't think I can do it with face plates but we do use teeth."

"I like teeth," she says.

With a grin, he scores his teeth across her neck, making her breath hitch, then stays there, alternating teeth and tongue when she least expects it. Her eyes closed, she clings to the back of his head and neck with one hand and lets her other hand wander, only for her nails to catch on his tunic.

"How do I take this off?" she asks.

It all snowballs from there: They show each other how to remove their clothes, what feels good, what doesn't. It's not perfect, even being their first time together and their first times with another species - she gets briefly stuck in her own shirt as they try to remove it, he gets ticklish and bumps his head on the Thanix cannon behind them, she slides on some of the lube that didn't quite make it onto her fingers, he comes incredibly quickly and gets embarrassed about it - but at the same time, it's incredible. There's being able to see, hear, touch how good she's making someone feel. Feeling it herself is something else entirely. Arousal and affection reflect back and forth between them until she can no longer tell whose is whose, only that she's never been this turned on in her life, never felt so -

Not loved. Whatever this is, this warmth, this adoration, this desire, she blames their connection, because that's the only reason it's mutual. When Garrus surfaces from between her still twitching thighs, his surprisingly talented tongue licking her fluids from his mouthplates, she counts herself lucky that though she's not in love with her soulmate, he's a good friend who's willing to experiment and even more willing to please.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she says, stroking his cheek. "How do linked soulmates who actually love each other ever get anything done?"

"Probably by not minding that they can still feel each other when they're not touching." He nuzzles her. "We should have done that a long time ago."

" _That_ sounds complicated," she says. "This? This is friends and soulmates at the end of the world."

There's a vague pang of something negative in the link, but he only hums in agreement, and soon enough it's gone when he presses his forehead to hers, and she forgets to ask about it. "Was that the something good you wanted?"

Nodding, she pulls him closer. "Overall, yeah. Some parts of it..."

"I told you that doesn't usually happen," he says, his mandibles flapping. "We weren't going to talk about it!"

When she starts laughing, this time he's the one who shuts her up with a kiss.

(This time, he's not embarrassed.)

 

Earth isn't the same planet they left what feels like a lifetime ago, before she accepted Spectre status, before Garrus linked them together. It's rubble and skies gray with dust and Reapers which Joker picks his way through after dropping off Shepard and the initial shore party, Garrus among them. She tries to block out his adrenaline rush as she discusses use of the _Normandy_ with high command in Shepard's absence.

When they manage to rendezvous, Shepard says his goodbyes and makes what she's keenly aware may be his last speech to them. He picks out Ashley for the final push towards the Conduit, then gives everyone a moment to get ready. She drifts away from the squad, to go over her mod selections on her rifles again, to check over her armor, to pray.

She's praying once more that her family, up there on the Citadel, is safe, when Garrus walks up to her. "Hey."

The bloom of linked emotion in her head goes warm and cautious as she meets his gaze. "Hey."

"It's the end of the world, so I just wanted to say..." He pauses, as if thinking better of it. Odd: She's definitely felt more comfortable with him since they'd slept together the other night, and she would have thought he'd feel the same. He starts again with, "I was in the room when my mom died, and my dad knew it before the machines did. I've never seen him in so much pain."

"Sarah, my sister, you met her in hospital - her soulmate was a military man," she says. "He got called in on their honeymoon. He died on Demeter, and she screamed so loud, even before the Alliance called her."

Garrus nods, looks down at her hands, and looks back up again. "I don't want that to be us," he says softly. "You're... You're one of my best friends too, Ash. And I don't want to find out how losing a linked soulmate feels." His mandibles tilt upwards, an approving gesture she's come to recognize in him. "So kick ass out there, and come back to tell me what tactics and rifles you used."

"That's the plan," she says. There's something he's not saying, she can tell from the attempt at withdrawal in their connection, but on such an important mission, she doesn't want to get into it. Instead, she asks, "What about you, what are your orders?" She'd seen him talking to the turian Primarch earlier.

"I'm taking a turian platoon out to evacuate injured resistance forces and straggling civilians."

She nods. "Keep them safe."

"I will." He hesitates, then headbutts her, light and so brief that there's only a flicker of the link making everything seem okay. "Not sure if turian heaven is the same one you believe in, but if this thing goes sideways and we both end up there... Meet me at the bar."

Well, this was a far sweeter goodbye than she would have expected from him, even after sleeping together. "Order me a vodka and Paragade," she says.

"Don't be stupid, I'm getting you a vodka and Tupari," he says. "There's no Paragade in Heaven; that stuff belongs in Hell."

It's such a disproportionately vehement belief about sports drinks of all things that she starts laughing, and then he's laughing too, and Shepard's eyebrows are raised as he comes over to them.

"Something funny, soldiers?"

Being called 'soldier' automatically straightens both their spines, but she's still trying not to laugh as she explains, "According to Garrus, there's no Paragade in Heaven."

"Right," says Shepard, still looking confused. "Well, we're heading out soon, and Garrus, I think the Primarch wants you."

"Understood, skipper," she says, and once Shepard's gone, she turns back to Garrus. "I'm not saying goodbye," she decides. "I'm saying be careful."

"Right back at you," he says. "No getting hospitalized by cyborgs or rogue Spectres this time."

 

It's not a cyborg, or a rogue Spectre, or even a Brute or one of those godforsaken Banshees that gets her this time.

It's a tank.

The first thing she feels after it slams into her is a tidal wave of concern from Garrus, but she's too focused on staying in this, on kickstarting her clearly empty medigel dispensers as the pain hits her to try and reassure him. He only gets more frantic as Shepard orders the _Normandy_ to pick them up.

Liara helps her up the ramp and holds her up as she makes a futile bid to stay with Shepard, and when the ramp starts to close, footsteps she recognizes as Garrus's sprint towards them.

"Out of my way!"

She doesn't see his gauntlets drop to the floor, only hears the clang of armor on metal grating. And then he's saying, "I'm here, I've got you, stay with us, Ash, _please_ stay with me," his bare hands cupping her cheeks, and the pain muffles. It doesn't _heal_ , she still has the wounds and the bruises, but it's easier to bear while they have skin on skin contact.

He stays with her as marines help her onto a stretcher and carry her into the elevator, and his eyes, wide and pale with worry, are the last thing she sees before she passes out.

 

She comes to in the medbay and once she's realized where she is, finds herself blurting out, "Where's Garrus?"

Chakwas raises an eyebrow, but only says, "I sent him out to get some sleep. He made me promise to fetch him if you were in any more pain."

Only then does she realize that he's quiet in her head and the pain of the battlefield is mostly gone, and she settles back in her bed. "Okay."

As Chakwas runs more medical checks on her and then gives her a sitrep, Ashley remembers and for the first time, truly understands that without Shepard onboard nor the ability to contact him, she has command of the _Normandy_. The _Normandy_ , crashed on a mystery planet, with Adams having stepped up while she was out of commission, with Reaper forces inexplicably helping repair the ship, with several injured marines aboard because Joker had been making evac runs before Shepard ordered them to leave.

The marines need the bed more than she does, so Chakwas helps her into a wheelchair, but when Private Campbell leaps up to take her to the bathroom, she says, "It's alright, Private, I need the walk."

It seems like a poor reason to reject an offer of help, but Ashley's too curious to call her out on it and ultimately more comfortable stumbling in front of a doctor who helped her recover from Mars than in front of a very junior officer. Her injuries and the painkillers make her steps weak and difficult, barely enough to get to the latrine and then to the sink.

Only as she's washing her hands does Chakwas finally ask, "Garrus is your soulmate, isn't he?"

Ashley closes her eyes, and lets her silence serve as her answer.

"I'm a trained link reporter," Chakwas says quietly. "Garrus having your name was in his medical file, but you didn't have a name, and on the SR-1, I was more concerned about Shepard and Kaidan. I started to wonder after the two of you began telling me about each other's injuries before they got back to the ship."

The _Normandy_ 's link reporters had always been a mystery to her, but the CMO makes so much sense - maybe knowing her name was on Garrus's wrist was why Chakwas had been scolding him for his opinion on Virmire. One part of the story makes no sense, though: "Ma'am? Why didn't you report us?"

"With you not having a name, I couldn't confirm it until he insisted on touching you after you were hit by the tank," she says. "There is just enough literature on the physical effects of the soulmate link for me to recognize what he was trying to do, and from the looks of your vitals, it worked."

"I thought you were allowed to report suspicions with evidence."

"It was the end of the world, Williams," says Chakwas. "I wasn't about to begrudge you any happiness you might find, nor risk the _Normandy_ losing one or both of its best soldiers. And I have no plans of reporting you when comms are back online, either."

Ashley sags into the wheelchair. "Thank you," she breathes.

"Don't mention it," Chakwas says, wheeling her out of the bathroom. "You've got a ship to run."

 

Adams is happy to be relieved of command, but content to help her hash out an action plan: Even with Marauders and Husks apparently repairing the exterior of the ship ("We're not letting them inside because at _least_ half the ship will shoot them - like I did," Adams admits), the ship needs a lot more work before it's spaceworthy again, and a great deal of the injured onboard need more than the stabilization they're equipped for. They also have more people aboard than usual which means they don't have enough food for them all, and from initial plant samples, the planet they've landed on is levo, making the food situation more urgent for Garrus and Tali.

"I don't understand how everyone's here," she says. Everyone who hadn't been with her and Shepard on their push to the Conduit had been assigned elsewhere, in most cases as leaders.

"Shepard had us pick up the squad as you were coming up on the beam," says Adams. "I think he had a feeling something was going to happen."

Without discussion, they hold a brief moment of silence for Shepard, wherever he is. No one had heard from him even on the way to the Charon Relay.

And then they're back to planning. She lets Adams keep command of the repair crew, assigning him the more technically minded members of the squad, and she takes charge of the exploration (mostly food gathering and defense, really) team, keeping the boys for herself.

"You're not going out there while you're still injured, are you, Commander?" Adams asks, concerned. "It's been safe so far but who knows what you might find out there, or if the Reapers might turn on us again."

"No," she says with a sigh. Chakwas has cleared her for command, but not for going ashore. "Vega'll be my second. And that's why I'm keeping Garrus, in case they need a sniper."

Partway through their planning session, Garrus wakes up, she can tell by the soft, almost fluffy feeling in her mind, and when he turns up in her room (seemingly the only place on the ship marines _aren't_ being triaged in) afterwards, she realizes that feeling is relief, and it's the other thing she'd felt the morning after the party, when she'd headbutted him and teased him for his reaction to it.

"Glad you're still with us, Commander," he says.

She shakes her head. With more responsibility than she ever expected suddenly on her all at once, she doesn't need her Gunnery Officer right now; she needs her best friend - she needs her soulmate. She opens her arms, and immediately understanding, Garrus comes forward and hugs her, resting his jaw against her forehead.

"I'm here, Ash," he murmurs, warm and comforting. "I've got you."

Reaching for the back of his neck, she clings to him, her arms tucked inside his carapace. "Everything banked so hard to port," she whispers.

"I know," he says soothingly. "It's weird looking out the window and seeing Husks helping fix the _Normandy_ , and I keep tripping over injured marines. But I know you, and I'm sure you have a great plan for dealing with everything."

It takes a while for her to lay it out for him, and he's silent for long enough afterwards that she starts to wonder if he disapproves.

"Commander," he says eventually. "With all due respect, may I go under Engineer Adams' direct command instead of yours?"

She raises an eyebrow. First 'Commander', then military speak for 'kiss my ass', then asking to report to Adams? These mixed messages are even more confusing than Shepard back on the SR-1. "Why?" She's already explained to him that she needs his sniping in the field more than she needs his darling cannons online.

He winces. "I don't trust myself to follow your orders."

"Ex _cuse_ me?" she demands, and then it hits her: "Is this because we're soulmates?" What happened to missing missions with her?

"No, Ash, it's because I'm in love with you," he growls, and her jaw drops. Of all the reasons he'd want to work with someone else, that had not occurred to her. "So if you order me to retreat while you're the one holding the line, I don't think that's going to happen."

Because he'll want to protect her, she realizes, and she puts her head in her hands. "Oh, God."

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice quiet now as shame seeps through him. "It was the end of the world and I... complicated things."

It's not the first time in these two days he's started a sentence with the end of the world, but he's hiding less this time. The yearning she's sometimes felt from him through their connection suddenly makes sense, as does the occasional sadness when she called him her friend. "Is this what you were trying to tell me on Earth?"

He nods. "I didn't say it then because I knew you didn't want a relationship and you'd hated that I'd linked you before you were ready, so it would have just been a distraction for you when you didn't need it. But now that you're taking command, it's... relevant."

Jesus, she should have never slept with him; she _knew_ that could get messy. He's right that she doesn't return it - she doesn't have the mental space to even accept it. "I can't deal with this right now, Garrus," she says, lifting her head to look at him again. "I literally just told you about everything else I have to handle -"

"I know," he says quickly. "I'm sorry for dumping this on you now, I never wanted to put this on you when you're already having a hard time. I'm not telling you because I want a relationship: I'm telling you because I don't want to risk the mission."

It is the smallest mercy he could give her with this kind of confession. Massaging her temples, she nods. "Permission granted, Vakarian, but don't you ever say 'with all due respect' to me again," she says. "Not when you're switching squads over not respecting my authority."

His spine's rigid, but it's military enough that it doesn't read as an outward sign of the regret coming through their connection loud and clear. "Understood, Commander."

"Get out," she says flatly.

He walks, but before he opens the door, she sees him turn around in the reflection on her window.

"For the record, I didn't fall in love with you because you're my soulmate, or because we touched with the link, or even because we had sex with the link," he says. "I fell in love with you because you're strong, and fun, and compassionate, and principled, and a good leader and a hell of a shot - everything I like about you as a friend, and everything I look for in a woman."

"Garrus -"

"I'm dismissed, I know," he says, and actually leaves.

Minutes later, she's still trying to figure out if and when she led him on when Private Westmoreland comes in with painkillers and a glass of water.

"Garrus told Chakwas he was talking to you and you needed these," Westmoreland says cheerfully.

Ashley wants to scream, but Westmoreland looks so glad to finally be helpful, and she really is starting a headache on top of her injuries, so she just takes the pills and dismisses her.

 

As the days wear on, the crew slowly gets the ship ready to fly again, and she finds herself in the astonishing position of having to tell people not to shoot the Reaper forces coming aboard the ship to help. (All of them with armed guards, of course, and Ashley herself keeps a gun trained on a Marauder as it rewires dislodged systems.) James and Javik find some weird fruit that Liara recognizes and shoot some fairly edible animals, and as Garrus and Tali look at rationing, Adams thanks her for giving him Garrus to work with, as his programming skills are helping speed things along.

"Good," she says. "The sooner we're in the air, the sooner we can get somewhere with dextro food."

Of course, it's not just the occasional second hand hunger pangs that keep Garrus on her mind as he keeps his distance more completely than he had after he'd linked them together. She misses working with him and even just spending time with him. She misses his voice and his advice. Though Tali hugs her when she catches her crying about the injured soldiers they lose (she barely knew them, but she feels like she's failed them), it's not the same as a hug from her soulmate.

(He radiates muted comfort with a kernel of confusion, but does not look for her to find out what upset her, and nor does she look for him. Though he didn't offer to give her space this time, she couldn't blame him for needing it himself after confessing his love to someone who couldn't cope with it.)

The tech team gets comms back online, and Ashley learns that it's not just Reaper forces helping rebuild on the ground across the galaxy, actual Reapers have been helping fix both communication and mass relays; that her family checked in safe with the Alliance during an attempt to find out if _she_ was safe; that Anderson's body was found deep within the Citadel; that Shepard's was not. She's relieved to learn they're in the same system as a quarian ship that had the same idea of trying to retreat as the Crucible was activated, and though they're repairing their ship too, they're happy to share dextro supplies once they can meet up.

Garrus's face, already starting to look thin and tired to her concerned gaze, lights up when she breaks the news to the squad. Later on, she finds him alone and tiptoes so she can headbutt him.

"I'm sorry I can't feed you," she says, feeling his surprise even as he relaxes into the serenity of their connection and crouches so she doesn't have to crane her head.

"It's okay," he says, love and longing thick in his voice and in her head without being put into words. "Part of the risk working on a levo ship."

"Garrus," she says, realizing it's not the only thing she regrets: She shut him out again, something that had hurt him even before he'd loved her. "I'm sorry."

He closes his eyes. "I know."

She stays with him, breathing the same air, drawing her own comfort from linked contact, and when she finally leaves, she wonders if she'd done it only as a friend.

 

They start talking again after that, cautious and careful, slowly dropping each other's ranks and surnames from conversation. He skips the progress updates that she's getting from Adams and instead tells her the amusing parts of ship repair (and, gingerly, the awkward parts: apparently Tali had come onto him after the Cerberus base, and though he'd let her down gently, she's still embarrassed about it). She passes on the silly stories from the exploration and defense team (James still can't tell when Javik is messing with him). They tell each other about their assignments on Earth, including the tactics and rifles they used.

(She waits on his cot in her pajamas one evening after Garrus faints from hunger on shift and another injured marine dies, and without a word they cuddle in their short and sleeveless nightwear, as much skin on plates contact as they can get without completely stripping down. They accidentally fall asleep in that embrace, and when they wake up still in it, neither of them want to let go and get up, but they do not discuss how he feels both a bittersweet happiness and a yearning for more, nor how she feels -

(Something. She feels _something_ , which she refuses to examine until her judgment's not clouded by linked physical contact.)

Garrus is the one to suggest adding Anderson, Shepard, and their dead marines to the memorial wall. She decides to hold off until they're spaceworthy, not wanting to admit to herself just yet that Shepard's really gone again, but when they're finally ready to fly, she takes on the responsibility of putting up Shepard's name herself. She's the commanding officer now, and they'd been close even when she wasn't in his bed.

As the rest of the crew filters away from the memorial, she finds herself staying, reading all the names. Her gaze catches on Kaidan's name, like it usually does, and then on Shepard's. They'd been soulmates too, but had set even the possibility of love aside for the mission, and Shepard had, for a time, loved her instead.

And then he'd told her to go get her soulmate. Her soulmate whom, in the time it took to repair the ship, she's finally realized she does, in fact, care for as more than a friend. Their empathetic connection kept her so in tune with his emotions but she's been too stubborn to listen to her own.

She waits until they're safely in the air, their ascent steady, before finding Garrus in the battery. At the sound of the doors opening, he turns around.

"Ash?"

Grabbing him by the carapace, she drags him down to her height (this had been so much easier in bed) and kisses him, slow and sweet. Into the kiss, into their connection, she pours in the strength he lends her when they talk about their families and their careers and the war, her gratitude and excitement from his teaching her new hand to hand moves, how supported she feels by his sweet little gestures of water and food when she's hurt or hungover, her admiration of his work in the field and on the ship, the soar of her heart when he smiles at her, every moment she's treasured with him without the influence of linked physical contact. As bewildered and overwhelmed as he is beneath it all, he melts into her kiss achingly quickly, but he keeps his hands off her until he eventually pushes her away.

"Ash," he repeats, his voice hoarse. "What...?"

"I don't know if this is love," she says honestly. "But I do have feelings for you. It's not destiny, it's not the link making every little touch amazing, it's just... you, being the best thing in my life."

Hope leaps wild in her head and in his eyes. "Yeah?"

"I'm ready to try this," she says, and he smiles, beautiful in his happiness. "But you're still staying under Adams' command." She doesn't ever want to end up in Shepard's position of leaving her soulmate to his death.

"Yes, ma'am," he says, taking her hands, gauntlets on gloves. "Yes, Ash."

He headbutts her, and it's not just their connection, but for the first time in this strange new world, she feels like this could be a new beginning.


End file.
